Models show designs by designer Thomas on Feb. 4, on runway fashion, during the first day of Montreal's Fashion Week.

Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf
, The Gazette

Early February, with an Arctic windchill outdoors, and a big chill indoors at the cavernous Arsenal: Montreal Fashion Week, edition fall-winter 2013/14, got off to a valliant start despite a lean lineup of top designers Monday night.

The big chill was not just in the temperature - which, frankly, does not promote great fashion statements from reasonable folks, although one stylist in a strapless ballgown braved it for most of opening night. The temperature in the cocktail room was probably a nice autumnal 5 degrees, okay, maybe 8.

The chill was also about the ongoing crisis in fashion design, one that Le Devoir revisited in a feature headlined: Montreal and fashion: a reality far from the glory of the catwalks, describing a marginal market, rivalries and a fragmented network.

Veteran designer Jean-Claude Poitras raised the spectre of the two solitudes of manufacturing and design in the article.

After the show by Mélissa Nepton Monday night, he told me there remains an unwillingness the face the reality - and a culture in which criticism is not allowed - the reality being that "Montreal is not a terrific fashion capital of the world."

He said he could understand how designers don't want to return again and again to the catwalks - notable absences this season are Denis Gagnon, Marie Saint Pierre, and a coterie of newer talents that have caused some sensation in the recent years like UNTTLD, Travis Taddeo, Anastasia Lomonova and Duy.

"The garment industry does not take them seriously,'' he said. "The reality is that most designers - even if they have talent - are not well structured.''

In his day, Poitras noted, he had backers from the manufacturing sector - Auckie Sanft and Irving Samuel.

"Where are they now? Where are the buyers?

"It is one thing to promote fashion, another to back it.

"Do we want to create garments or do we want to create style? We have to address this problem once and for all,'' Poitras said.

Gagnon, for his part, attended the shows Monday night, and explained that he had just finished spring production - no time to mount a fashion show that brings little back. His buzz, of course, is already there.

Meanwhile, I say valliant start with the four shows Monday night, because of their diversity. By Thomas, a cool contemporary label, opened the proceedings, followed by ultra avant-gardist Pedram Karimi, contemporary commercial Mélissa Nepton and Nadya Toto.

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